My Name is Baltis Verano
by Groonfish
Summary: After a consistent stream of bad luck, a young clockmaker from the ancient Redoran city of Blacklight is put in shackles and sent to an Imperial prison for murder. However, fate rarely lets the fated sit in prison for long. Don't hesitate to review!
1. The Bitter Coast

It was dawn. The marshy, southwestern coast of the strange island of Vvardenfell was illuminated with the red morning sun. It shined through the weedy, algae-draped trees on such a notably clear day – free of the thick fog that was usually everywhere along that area called _the Bitter Coast_. The reeds and sea ferns and tall, crystalline-looking flowers swayed with the ripples on the living water. Sunlight refracted off of their angular blue bulbs and flitted over craggy tree trunks and a broken, moss-covered stone wall that was far past its prime, sinking into the soft ground. Everything was lit up as if a giant, warm fire was nearby. The air was filled with gooey, hot humidity, and it stuck to everything like an illness.

It was in this place that a solitary, worn old dock stretched out into the coastal waters, extending away from a weary old fishing village that was playing host to the generally unwanted presence of the government. This scene was nothing new in the Empire, of course. Where the dock met the shore was a meticulously edged and maintained stone path, leading up to an officious, clean-cut stone building, with imperial limestone columns supporting its broad gabled roof. This building was frequently mopped with a hardy solution that killed moss, and a powerful bleach. It stood out like a manicured sore thumb amidst the boggy trees.

At the other, further end of the dock, a twisted, alien-looking boat was silently gliding across the water towards its mooring. The ship's bow was gnarled and woody, and the knotted mast stretched high into the bloody sky like a willowy trunk, and the canvas sail flupped in the salty sea breeze. An old black-skinned man leaned over the twisted railing with a rope clutched tightly between his aged, calloused fingers. He stooped lower and closer to the edge, ducking his head underneath the rail and eying the murky depths of green water. He decided it was the right depth.

The anchor plunged through the water and stirred up silt as it hit the bottom, and settled amidst the brackish green algae that resided there. From shore, several bystanders leaned against buildings and waist-high walls to watch the spectacle. Such an event happened frequently in the small village of Seyda Neen, but rarely was it on such a clear day as the one they were presented with that morning. Amidst the tiny crowd, a short, scrawny bosmer brought his hand to his face and rubbed the side of his sharp little nose with his forefinger. He was unnoticed. His tired eyes glistened with a fleeting spirit, like he had woken up and the haze had cleared from his thoughts. It happened every time a boat like this arrived. Someone new was coming. Someone who didn't have that pesky stigma – didn't think of him as a lowlife. He quietly hummed a tune.

On the deck of that peculiar ship, the black-skinned man hopped down onto the dock, his braided, coarse grey hair fluttering with the whoosh of air, and his muscles tensing as he hit the boards. It creaked angrily at the impact, and the black-skinned man looked at it, and something in his eyes apologized to the old wood. He stood upright, the metal studs in his leather shirt glistening in the sunlight. Something told the onlookers that this man... was unimportant.

The door to the main cabin swung open, and a broad-chested Colovian took three deliberate, bold steps down the wooden stairs onto the deck. The sound of his polished boots clanking on the wood echoed through the air to where the residents of Seyda Neen stood watching, and the light from his shiny breastplate and helmet glinted in the sunlight and onto their faces. The small bosmer squinted his eyes, and his mouth hung slack as he struggled to observe the scene. He picked uncomfortably at his clothes - they were dirty - and he found himself comparing his old rags to the chrome shell of the imperial soldier. He felt sorely lacking, and it made him angry.

All around, the murmur of discussion and gossip began to spread.

"Is that a Knight Errant?" some asked, pointing and gawking at the soldier's shiny armor. Others whispered, "Whoever they're dropping off must be important."

A hushed din of voices came from the shore, and the black-skinned man looked up from his work tying the boat to the dock, and a thin smirk cracked his lined face. The wispy strings of his thin beard swayed in the breeze. His concentration came back to the task at hand with the stimulus of three gloved snaps. He looked up to see the annoyingly wry face of Knight Errant Mallorbye - a particularly jaunty and arrogant example of a man, and his superior officer. Mallorbye had his hand held out with his palm up, as if he were offering up a fistful of raisins or some other snack, but then he swiftly retracted it with an overly dramatic flourish.

"Finish up your mooring, spearman, we're on a tight schedule!" he said, with an air of feigned camaraderie. He gestured with his hand towards the hatch leading below deck, a gesture which went unnoticed by the black-skinned spearman, as he was tying his final knot around the rusty iron loop on the dock post. "The prisoner should be brought up from below deck any minute now," he shared, "let's get that boarding plank down." Mallorbye stood awkwardly, as if he didn't know what to do with himself, and the black-skinned man pulled himself back up onto the deck and slid the boarding plank from its place and off the edge, where there was a gap in the railings. It hit the wooden boards of the dock with a dull, thunk. Mallorbye nodded as the spearman locked it into place with two cast iron pins.

"I think we're ready!" he exclaimed, and walked down the plank onto the dock. It creaked with his weighty armored body, but he strode on to the end of the dock, to stand in the shade of the imperial-style building. It was currently being bleached by a grey-haired dunmer, who was up on a ladder high above Mallorbye's head. He looked at a friend in the small crowd, and pretended to spit on the soldier's helmet, and the friend let out a barking laugh. The spearman noticed, too, but kept his laughter to himself. As he went to take his post, he cracked a smile between his dark lips - and bared his grey teeth to the red morning sun.


	2. The Prison Ship

Lying amidst a pile of burlap sacks and barrels, a young dunmer prisoner was having a fitful dream that he would not remember, save for clutches of colors and noises and ideas. The color red, like blood, and the sounds of chanting, and chewing. The conceptual smell of decay, and trama root tea - the conceptual feel of being touched on the face. The sound of tortured breathing in a quiet, stone room. The feeling of being watched.

He woke up with a start, flailing both arms out for a handhold and not finding one. His breath held in his chest and he gasped for air as if he was under water, and swallowed his pent-up spit down the wrong pipe in panic. He was drowning in his own spit. He wheezed and coughed painfully and pounded his chest, forcing the foreign liquid out from his lungs and into his inflating cheeks. He swallowed again, correctly, but kept coughing. His eyes were watering - everything around him was a sea of the color brown, with a blurry spot of greyish blue right in front of his face - the blurry spot looked menacing.

"Are you going to live?" a coarse, rusty voice said. Even without seeing him, the coughing youth could taste the coppery bite of dry humor. That, or he had started to cough up blood. He licked the inside of his cheek and decided that that wasn't the case, and let out another staggered, punching cough. It took a long time to get something out of your lungs. He wiped his eyes on the filthy sleeve of his ragged shirt, and looked up at the scarred, scrappy-looking dunmer standing in front of him. The grizzled mer had leaned up against the paneled wooden wall of the small storage room, and it held his weight with a disgruntled groan.

"Finished with your wheezing?" the Dunmer asked. He stared down at the young mer between the burlap sacks, blinking with his one good eye while the other scarred socket sat unmoving. The mer on the ground coughed again but was trying to hold it in, and he nodded and swallowed. He thought that he saw a smirk from the one-eyed mer, but he was probably just imagining it to make him seem less scary and intimidating. The fact that the grey skin of his shirtless chest was laced with callouses and scars didn't help. His eyes fell on the old manacles around the prisoner's wrists. It seemed as if he noticed the sudden interest, because the prisoner brought his hand to one of the bands and fidgeted with the iron pin. It squeaked in its hole.

"You had a rough night," the mer said, the gaunt skin of his cheeks straining and clenching as he yawned, and then pursed his thin lips into a grimace. He continued, at the blank look from the youth, "Must have had a bad dream or some such thing. Not even last night's storm could wake you." The mer offered out a grizzled hand, that was missing the ring finger past the third knuckle. He watched as the lad hesitated, and then grabbed the hand and let the prisoner pull him off the floor.

"What's your name?" he asked, watching as the mer dusted himself off.

"Baltis," he said, and he coughed again slightly. The matted plume of his mohawked hair was smushed down by the burlap sacks, and it looked more like a wonky row of dark orange wickwheat running the length of his head than a hairstyle. He reached up to his head and felt it, and let out a sigh of disappointment. It was a very popular hairstyle back in the city that he just ruined. He'd been able to keep it up for so long. "What's _your_ name?" he asked back. He had only seen this prisoner around the ship a handful of times. For such a long journey, almost a month, it was unusual.

"Anon." the mer lied.

"Anon? I've never heard that name before."

"It's a last name."

"Oh, I see. What's your first name?"

The dunmer called Anon pushed off from where he was leaning and ducked around the doorframe to look into the main cargo hold of the ship, which was lined on either side with long wooden tables, held up by ropes attached to the ceiling. There were a few tired looking prisoners eating slop, all seated far apart from each other. Otherwise, the room was empty, but the way the water sounded, and the muffled activity from the above decks, told him they had reached shore.

"I don't have a first name," the dunmer said, still looking into the cargo hold. This statement was also not true. "Just call me Anon."

"Okay Anon." Baltis said, and saw as the mer's scarred back huffed with what could have been any range of emotions. It looked like he had been lashed. "Why are you in prison?" Baltis asked.

Anon pulled his head back out of the doorframe and turned around.

"Murder." he lied, quickly. "Stabbed a man."

"Is that so?" Baltis asked, and he sounded skeptical, so Anon turned around and looked into the cargo hold again. The dirty lanterns were gently swaying, and the shadows of the tables and benches shifted on the grimy wooden floor. The sound of footsteps came from the level above, moving over their heads with the metal _thunk thunk_ of a spearman's boots.

"Yes." he said flatly.

"So what-" Baltis began, and Anon hushed him with a raised hand. The other hand was splayed out over the doorframe, and the missing finger stood out like a sore thumb against the dark, worn wood.

"Quiet," he said, still observing the cargo hold, "here comes the guard." He pulled his gaze away and retreated back into their small room, and climbed up and crouched on top of a crate, tucked into a corner.

Baltis watched as the soldier's legs appeared on the stairs, and his studded leather tunic, and finally his close-shaved head. He was a man of reasonable girth, and his studded shirt looked strained around his belly. His face was gruff and ruddy. From the corner, Anon gave Baltis a nervous, warning look, and put his finger up to his terse lips. _Quiet_. He looked back to the guard and felt a lump in his stomach.

The portly soldier walked up to the doorframe and eyed it skeptically, and then looked Baltis in the face. He looked mildly annoyed, like he didn't enjoy his job.

"Come on, we're on a tight schedule. This is your stop. Let's get you off this boat," the soldier said, already turning the other direction. Baltis nodded and followed, and as he left the small storage room he heard the hiding dunmer's raspy voice say in a quiet whisper "You had better do what they say."

As he walked away, following the bulky soldier in his ascension up the wooden stairs, that groaned and creaked with his booted footsteps, Baltis tried to remember ever seeing the dunmer Anon at any of the roll calls during their journey from Blacklight. He couldn't recall a time. He couldn't even remember seeing the scarred prisoner any time one of the imperial guardsmen was present. It was like he disappeared into thin air. Baltis almost considered asking the soldier about this mysterious prisoner, but something (and he was unclear about what exactly it was) kept him from doing so. Baltis tucked the memory of Anon into the back of his mind as he arrived with the soldier at another set of stairs, leading up to the top deck. The soldier sat down on a wooden navy cot along the hull.

"Head on up," he said, lazily waving towards the hatch.

And Baltis Verano did - he pushed up on the hatch door and met a humid blast of air and wetness, like he had stepped through a ceiling made out of water. The sun was at his back and nestled behind the soppy marsh trees, flickering red behind the swaying tendrils of algae hanging from the branches. Insects buzzed around his eyes and nostrils as he turned to look at its light. He thought, what an awful place.

But this was the first sun he had seen in weeks, and for that he was grateful.

Feel free to give me lots of critique on this. I'm really trying to get a solid writing technique down that people like to read, so let me know what you think! Thanks for reading =)

Also, I'm generally trying to approach this from a different angle than just reciting what happens in the game. I know there was a lot of dialogue that was drawn from that opening chargen scene, but I'm going to be straying from that starting in the next couple of chapters. I really want to flesh out the main story with character development. So hope you all enjoy!


	3. In the streets of Blacklight

_- Flashback: In the streets of Blacklight_

For a clockmaker, Baltis Verano had a notable disregard for time. True, he usually showed up at work within five minutes of the opening bell, but this was often just due to sheer dumb luck, or his sister Ravne battering down his door every morning to get him out of bed. He never carried a pocket watch, though he did own one (it could be found, with the knob clicked out to stop it from keeping time, in the drawer of his bedside table, next to a sorely under-read copy of _The Consolations of Prayer_.) His only distinction of what day it was revolved around whether it was a weekday or not and, therefore, whether he would be going to work or not. In fact, the only indicator of time he abided by was the toll of six on the clock post on the street corner – that toll which marked the end of his work day.

The city of Blacklight did not bode well with the after-work rush. The streets of Civic District were thick with weary, grim-faced people who had just completed whatever odd profession they were forced into by their dismal excuses for lives, Baltis observed as he pushed through the crowd. With the work day done, they were gracing the street with their apathetic presence. Baltis felt quite out of place – though he didn't much enjoy his work, the boredom that it entailed was left behind that heavy wooden door to the clockmaker's shop, as it swung shut with a heavy _clachunk_. Outside on the street, he was a fresh elf, with ears that looked sharper than everyone else's, but not too sharp. Smart ears, his father would say. He couldn't wait to get back to his home – the city streets were full of fog and wasted lives. It began to drizzle.

As he passed under the archway into Ermine Square (which was the posh governmental district) in order to avoid a seedy journey through the slums of St. Rilms's District, he felt the rain dripping from the tips of his rust-colored hair. It was falling steadily all over the city. The streets were becoming devoid of people, as many deemed it prudent to wait out the rainfall inside a tavern or sit reading under one of the awnings around the city center, but Baltis wished to be out of the rain and sitting in front of his own hearth. It was a quick shortcut and a few reliable alleyways later that he passed through a side route onto his street in the venerable March District. The light through the resin panes lining the way seemed to wax as he approached. The light from his own home cut through the dusk most of all, like a welcoming glow of familiarity.

Some of the windows of his home were dim, others flickering with the orange light from resin lamps, and one of them was lit in rich red with the light from Ravne's_ antiques_, and lined with shadowy curtains. Their home was a suitable address, very fine – his father was a lawyer, and could afford it. Thankfully, despite his chosen profession, Udo Verano wasn't like the other men and mer at the law offices. _They_ were prim and starched, fond for playing games of nine holes at the taverns in Ermine Square until the wee hours of the morning, and attending the theatre (the nicer one, in the Chorus District) to see the latest shows on opening night. Most of them lived in March District, too. East Side, of course.

Baltis unlatched the door and ducked inside, pulling it shut behind him with a _thwunk_. Immediately he met the warm smell of cooking. There were very few doors within the Verano household, save for those leading to the bedrooms upstairs, so any smell could easily fill the house - in this case, the delicious aroma of sizzling guar meat slathered with scuttle and saltrice crumbs (which was undoubtedly what was cooking.) The rain flecking against the resin windows almost sounded like popping fat - it made him even hungrier.

Kicking his shoes off into a wide wicker basket, and feeling the warmth of the hot-lacquered redware tiles that floored the house beneath his feet, Baltis padded his way down the hall, around a corner and down a short flight of stairs; around another corner at the bottom and then down a longer flight of stairs, moving at a brisk pace as he neared the kitchen. He was below the city streets by then, and the sound of rainfall was replaced by the actual sounds of crackling guar fat from within the next room.

"Is everyone eating tonight?" Baltis said, walking beneath the kitchen doorframe. His sister Ravne was busying herself by seamlessly doing three different tasks - flipping the guar meat on the counter griddle with a long, two-pronged fork, stewing a mash of saltrice and crab meat, and brushing thick wedges of grey meadow rye bread with olive oil. Her black hair whisked behind her as she bustled around the kitchen with an acrobat's step.

"Hardly," she responded breathily, "Just you and me tonight, brother. Hand me those plates."

Baltis obliged and passed her two ceramic plates that had been set on the counter. Ravne took them and hastily said "Thank you," and transferred sizzling guar meat onto each of them with the long fork. The bread was shuffled onto the plates, and gloppy saltrice mash was poured over them with a gnarled wooden ladle. It smelled delicious.

The dining room was around the corner and down the hall. Baltis carried his high-piled plate with careful balance as he followed his sister to the table.

He was hungry, and began to eat not seconds after his plate clinked on the tabletop.

"So where is everybody else?" Baltis said behind a bite of bread and mash, with his hand up to shield his mouth.

"Dad's late at work, mum is at ladies' meet, Hurkys and Iver are shopping at Red Ives," she said briskly. "M'Jingo is reading up on my bed, said we shouldn't wait for him. I figure he'll just come down and cook something up at two in the morn, like he always does."

Baltis nodded and went back to his food. Ravne picked at hers.

"Are you alright?" Baltis asked, "You seem odd."

Ravne sighed and made a face.

"No, I'm fine," she said, "My mind is still at work, is all. Hold on." She shook her head, black hair swirling, and then smiled with it in her face. "I'm good, now," she said, "Just politics, that's all."

Baltis nodded and smiled back, slightly weaker. Ravne was an aid to the Redoran Councilor Gorsvis Helas, who was a rugged but respectable mer, and through him she had heard rumblings of conflict across the border, in Cyrodiil. Helas was concerned, which made Ravne even more concerned, due to Helas' normally calm attitude. But there had been talk, of Banden Indarys, a Redoran soldier and head of the Indarys clan, speaking of revolution – a freedom from the Empire. Word had arrived from Cyrodiil that Banden Indarys' brother, Andel, had been named Count of Cheydinhal, and the city was erupting with anti-Imperial protests by the local Dunmer population.

It was no surprise that, amidst the stresses and tensions of the world, Baltis and Ravne settled into the Flin cabinet after dinner, leaving the plates to fester on the dining room table, and relaxing in front of the crackling hearth that was the central feature of their Redoran home. When Hurkys and his best friend Iver Rindo returned later in the evening, love-drunk and smelling of the exotic perfumes worn by two attractive Bosmer shop clerks, they quickly joined in.

"To… alcohol!" slurred Iver, taking a wallop of brandy into his cheeks and swallowing hard. The room was warm with fire and booze, and full of merriment. Better company could not be found and, for a brief moment, things were good for Baltis Verano.

But as fate would have it, in just a short month he would be on his hands and knees, staring at the stone floor of the Imperial City prison cell he had just been tossed into, with nothing but rags to keep him warm.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: ******_**Just a friendly reminder to REVIEW, please! I'm really curious to hear some feedback about what I'm writing, and I figure now that the story and the characters are getting a bit more developed (or at least I hope so), it should be a bit easier to review. Also, I'm planning to get updates out a lot faster, so I hope I can keep to that plan. Anyway, thanks for reading!** _** **


	4. Processing

_- Seyda Neen Harbor, Dawn_

On the docks of Seyda Neen, in the swampy yellow sunlight, the Imperial soldier's wide smile looked nauseating. He was standing there in a human can of sparkling silver, with a scroll and board in hand, scrawling down the details of Baltis' transfer that he, the Imperial Errant, was apparently unable to recall himself. Baltis found his good humor return, if only for a brief moment, as he informed the Errant that he was a "Grey Bosmer" who had been transferred from an Imperial prison on Summerset Isle. Baltis laughed to himself as he watched the smiley soldier's beaming grin falter slightly, and his quill scratch out the words _Dark Elf_ and, underneath that, in smaller script, _t.c. Blacklight, Morrowind_.

"Thank you," he said, still with an almost painful-looking smile on his face, "I'm sure you'll fit right in."

Baltis wondered whether it had been an attempt at small talk.

As he followed the Errant's jaunty, proud walk, his eyes caught a brief movement to his right. He did a double take as he saw a huge, six-legged insect, tall as a two-story building, loitering alongside a rugged cliff face. Its long, spindly legs lazily prodded the surface of the water which, in relation to the creature's amazing height, appeared very shallow. Such a large body on such thin legs appeared to be almost physically impossible, and Baltis almost wasn't sure to believe his eyes. He knew it must be a silt strider, like the stories of the Vvardenfell Ashlands described. He gazed at it, stumbling sharply as he reached the angular, bleach-white marble stairs leading to the Census and Excise Office. The proudly striding Imperial Errant didn't notice, and turned around just in time to see Baltis standing upright again.

The Errant had reached the door, and knocked twice with his gloved fist. The quill, resting precariously against the scroll and board that was tucked under his arm, jostled and fell, wafting out and down to the white marble doorsill.

"Come now, don't leave them waiting," the Errant said briskly, bending down nonchalantly to pick up his missing quill pen.

Baltis finished clambering up the treacherous stairs, the leather soles of his sandals clacking on each step, and approached the doorway. It was heavy looking, with lots of paneled inlays, the whole thing stained a dark, bold shade of brown. It stood out against the bleached façade of the Imperial structure in a very intimidating fashion. The whole building could have even passed for a fancy mausoleum, were it not for the elegant square windows – one on either side of the door. The view inside was marred by pale yellow curtains.

The Errant tapped his booted foot once, still maintaining a pleasant face, and Baltis obliged and lifted the wrought-iron latch of the door, and stepped inside.

The room in front of him was a perfect balance of shades – not too dark but not too light. Dark wooden walls were interrupted by crisp beige tapestries, displaying the stylized Imperial Dragon in bright red. The carpet was thin and tightly-woven, colored a pale off-white color. Baltis felt extremely self-conscious as he stepped across the floor – he was sure that he was tracking in a terrible quantity of dirt and muck from the grimy dock outside, but he daren't look back to his tracks. The carpet looked so clean, though, that he was sure it was bleached every day. The fireplace crackling in the corner made the room just a tad too warm for his taste in the already humid swamp climate, and lit the space in a warm yellow.

He crossed the floor nervously, approaching an elderly and utterly-bored looking man in a bureaucratic brown robe, holding a small, leather-bound book and lounging in an expensive armchair. The man flitted is eyes up and sighed, draping a thin red ribbon down over his page and clapping the book shut.

"Here you are," the man said dryly, "at last." He shifted in his chair, but didn't stand up. He tucked his book between the seat cushion at his hip.

The Knight Errant ducked around Baltis and set his scroll and board on the table next to the bored looking man, where a clerk was waiting ready with quill in hand. As the board clacked onto the desktop Baltis watched the young man scan over it with his eyes and quill, and nod in approval. He unspooled the scroll down over the length of the board, and signed at the bottom, right above where he locked the roll in place, and indicated for the Errant to do the same. He stepped over and withdrew his quill and inked his scrawling signature with a flourish.

The bored agent in the brown robe stroked his silver beard, and nodded as the Knight Errant ducked back out onto the dock and closed the door behind him.

"I just need a few more pieces of information before I send you on through," he said, "We'll try to do this as quickly as possible." He itched the outside of his capillary-laced nostril with one slender pointer finger, and slid a bundle of papers towards himself across the nearby desktop.

"First…" he started, and then made a face and shuffled through the stack of papers. The young clerk looked up from his scroll and gestured for Baltis to take a seat. Baltis obliged gladly, but reluctantly, and was still trying to take up as little space as possible as he sat on the cushioned wooden armchair. He felt uncomfortable in a room of such refined Imperial fashion, himself being a member of the Dunmer Great House of Redoran.

The thought occurred to him then, that he very well might have already been expelled from House Redoran for his crime. He frowned. _That _was no good.

"First," the agent continued, having found his proper page, "I need an occupation to write down. Class, trade, job – whatever you want."

"Well I've been in jail for two months," Baltis sighed, "I don't think I have a job anymore."

The agent nodded, as if he had heard this response before.

"Just tell me what you did _before_ you were arrested."

"I was a clockmaker's apprentice, to Wense E'Goul in the city of-"

"That's good, thank you," the agent interrupted, waving for the clerk to jot it down. The clerk had, however, already finished, and was waiting with his quill ready again. The agent didn't notice, and instead was raptured with his sheaf of papers, trailing with his finger down the page to the next order of business.

"Date of birth?" he asked.

"Eighth of Evening Star."

"Late in the year," the agent remarked to himself.

Baltis considered commenting – he wasn't quite sure what, but just something to break the awkwardness in the room as the clerk scribbled down his response – but he figured he would probably be interrupted again by the Census and Excice agent. So he stayed quiet. If anything, Baltis believed himself to have one good, solid character trait – the ability to know when to stop talking.

"That would make your birthsign…" the agent wafted his hand in the air as if looking for the scent of the answer he needed, "Remind me, I'm hazy on these things."

Baltis made a face, and wondered why it mattered.

"I have no idea. I think my sister told me, at one point, she was always really interested in-"

"Gancielle, could you go fetch that book from the shelf, out in the common area," the agent interrupted again, "The big one with the red cover."

Baltis sighed, and then was startled as a voice responded from the corner behind him. He spun in his chair to see a man in legion armor stand from his own seat with a creak, and walk through the heavy door into the next room. The man's face was chiseled and gallant, and his hair was slicked back in a classic Imperial style, and he was quite large, which made Baltis even more incredulous that he had failed to notice the soldier when he first entered the room.

After a short moment, in which the agent longingly eyed the small book tucked into the cushion by his hip, the large soldier named Gancielle returned, clutching a large tome under his arm. He handed it deliberately to the agent, who took it and nodded. The soldier returned to his corner and sat down, and his chair groaned.

"All right, let's see," the agent said, hastily flipping open the book as the binding crackled and thumbing through the pages, which were filled with small text and sketched drawings of star constellations, until he found the one he was looking for. "The Thief." He said it curtly, and snapped the book shut, shuffling it onto the nearby desktop. "That would explain your predicament," he said, but Baltis knew that he was still just talking to himself.

The young clerk looked up from his scroll expectantly, "Do you want me to add a new line for the," the clerk paused and glanced down, "um, birthsign? Or just add it in parentheses next to the date of birth?"

"New line."

"Right." He scratched out more text with his quill pen.

"I'm just going to group the last few together, to save time. I need your place of birth, religious identity," he paused for a moment, "since you're being released from prison, I'll need your reason for arrest – formality, of course, you've already been punished, not like they can punish you again. And then finally, your old census number, for documentation."

Baltis could only remember the last question – the census number – and while he remembered the question, he did not remember the number.

"Well I'm not sure what my census number is-"

"Start at the first one, if you would," the agent said quickly.

"What was the first one?"

A sigh. "Place of birth."

"Not really sure. I guess somewhere in Cyrodiil, around Bravil way, I've been told."

Baltis wondered if the agent would be curious, as to why he was unsure about his own birthplace. Unfortunately, the wasn't curious in the slightest, and barely broke stride in his questioning.

"All right, Bravil it is. The next question was your religion, if you recall."

"Can't say I really have one."

The agent turned to his clerk and muttered, "Just write down the default," and Baltis peeked and saw him scrawl the words _The Nine Divines_ on the scroll. Bureaucracy, he sighed. What filch.

"We'll just write down nonaffiliated," he said quickly, with a weird smile. He scanned his papers again. "Reason for arrest?"

"Well," Baltis hesitated, "I suppose it would technically be murder."

The agent paused for a moment, not looking up from his papers, but pursing his lips slightly. He obviously had not been expecting that answer. Baltis heard a lull in the clerk's quill scratching, and then the agent blinked and he heard it resume its scrawling noise again.

"Right," the agent muttered. "And you don't remember the census number, so we can just find that out from the offices in Ebonheart, that won't be an issue. Gancielle," he called, "would you take him to bunking for now?"

Baltis felt uneasy – that had sounded like an ominous statement. _Bunking._

The large soldier stood from his chair once again, its groan sounding extremely irritated at this point under his constant getting-up and sitting-down, and gestured for Baltis to follow. He did, reluctantly. He felt the grey-haired agent's gaze burning into his back as he left the room, up until Gancielle pulled the door shut loudly. Then there was muttering from behind the heavy wood, from under the doorframe. Baltis sarcastically wondered who they were talking about.

Gancielle led him down a long hallway, past a common room containing several people, all sitting at a long table. They glanced over as the two walked past.

"You're going to be spending the night in the bunks," Gancielle said. His voice was dry, and much more rugged than his trim appearance would suggest. "Just some silly regulation, because of all this fuss about the Blight. I think they really only need to be quarantining people _leaving _Vvardenfell, but they check the citizens coming back in as well. As if there was some _other_ disease we need to be worried about here." He let out a dry laugh.

Baltis was only vaguely clear on what the soldier was talking about, so he just nodded and said "hm, yeah" and figured that was enough. It was. _Oh, small talk_._ What a fine art._

They descended a long staircase, and arrived at a heavy door at the bottom, which Gancielle unlocked with a key. Lifting the latch, he pulled the door open to reveal a large corridor, with doors on either side, and what looked like a storage alcove at the far end of the hall, full with crates and barrels, and two burly beer kegs. Gancielle proceeded inside, and stopped at the first door on the right, and unlocked that with the same key.

"Here you are," he muttered, and pulled open the door. Baltis, to say the least, was not prepared for what he saw inside. Made apparent by the look on Gancielle's face, neither was he.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: A brief note - Review.**

**Socucius Ergalla is kind of a jerk, isn't he? He always _did _seem like he'd be a jerk, you know.**


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